Schwarzwald, Schluchsee, und Sonnenshein
by AmZ
Summary: A Les Miserables Highlander crossover. In 2006, Jean Valjean summons his ex-nemesis Javert to help him sort out a young headhunter. WILL NOT BE CONTINUED.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I excavated this ancient fic from an even more ancient computer and decided that eh, what the hell. Contains modernity and an itsy-bitsy self-insertion. Pure escapism without any meaning besides the obvious.

* * *

The demonic roar of the approaching motorcycle penetrated the foliage of the surrounding trees and broke through Valjean's slumber. Half a second later his mind was flooded with the familiar buzz: a symphony of yowls and ululations, overlaid with a sort of electric hum. Valjean's body shuddered out of centuries-old habit.

Behind the trees, the engine died. Valjean lifted himself up on his elbows and turned his head to watch the rider park his machine. To his surprise he spied two men instead of one: a tall and lanky figure draped in black shook hands energetically with a similarly tall and lanky figure in jeans and a grey shirt. A second later Jeans-and-T-shirt was running across the rails towards the distant platform, adjusting his massive hiking backpack as he ran.

_Tiens_, thought Valjean, lying back down onto the brittle grass.

Half a minute later, a familiarly hoarse baritone growled above Valjean's head: "'Tschuldigung, ist hier noch frei?". Eyes still tightly closed against the blinding sun, Valjean smiled.

"I'll take it as 'yes'," said Javert in French.

"You look... terribly hot," replied Valjean, after taking in his friend's outfit. He wasn't sure whether the material was rubber, vinyl, faux leather or something even more modern and esoteric, but it was dotted with pockets, criss-crossed with zippers, and the only part of Javert it left uncovered was the face. What Valjean found most fantastic about the costume was that even though it looked like something out of a high-budget porno flick, it seemed to be typical wearing gear for local motorcyclists: he'd seen two of them similarly attired in line for the ice-cream as he was coming down to the lakeside.

"Ugh." Javert pulled off his gloves, ripped off his sunglasses and hurriedly undid the top button of his high collar. "Holy fucking hell. Don't get me wrong, I'm rather fond of this get-up, but this weather has been murderous. As soon as you drop the speed below fifteen, you're as good as broiled."

"Go change out of it. There's a toilet in the Imbiss. Did you see it?" offered Valjean, thinking back to the sweaty crowd in shorts and bikinis clustered around the food stand.

Shaking his head, Javert stepped into the shade under Valjean's tree, slipped the headphones off his neck and dropped them next to Valjean's bag.

"Yes. I also saw the mile long queue for that toilet. No, I'll be fine. I'll just strip here if you don't mind."

"I don't mind."

"Thought you wouldn't," said Javert with a lascivious grin.

"It's a free country. Half of the beach is nude anyhow."

"Don't get your hopes up."

The conversation stalled as Javert embarked on the disrobing mission with the agility of a firefighter who part-timed at Chippendales.

"How long has it been?" asked Valjean.

"Eighteen months", said Javert after a second's thought. Two zippers and five buttons later he was out of his strange jacket and remained in a white shirt, which was suspiciously crisp and pristine.

The sight of his friend's thin, dark wrists firmly cuffed into white linen made Valjean recall a wonderful and horrible night from more than half a century ago when a bald, half-dead walking skeleton showed up on his doorstep wearing his best friend's face. Javert caught his eyes and raised his eyebrows in question.

"Do you still have… it?" asked Valjean quietly, eyes glued to Javert's left forearm.

Javert uncuffed the shirt and pulled up the sleeve. The tattoo was there, but was darker than Valjean had remembered it.

"I renewed it a couple of months ago," explained Javert, lowered the sleeve and did up the buttons.

"Did the tattoo guy ask about it?"

Javert shrugged.

"He wasn't too curious. I told him I belonged to a secret society and this was my initiation number. He took it for a joke and didn't ask any more. A young American chap, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. It obviously didn't ring any bells for him." He straightened out the already straight cuff. "Why would it, at this point? 'Z-576'. Could stand for a thousand things. Could be altogether random. Ignorance is bliss."

Valjean decided to change the subject before he said something embarrassingly maudlin.

"So how long has it been?"

"Look, I'm sorry I never made it to Italy last June, all right? The PST Sub-directorate went crazy after the second attack; they pulled the plug on my vacation time even before I said anything. I spent all of my rightful four weeks off nosing around Berlin," said Javert and lowered himself cautiously onto the grass, rolling up the jacket and arranging it under his head. The vinyl trousers stayed on.

"I remember. You never did tell me what happened."

"Don't even hope for it. It's all classified to high hell," said Javert glumly.

Valjean sighed.

"It's become so hard to talk to you. You are always knee-deep in secrets," he said.

"It's my job," pointed out Javert with his habitual rationalism. "You are a civilian. Join the Interpol, then we can chatter up a storm. I'm sure Human Trafficking could use you."

Javert's German, Valjean noticed, was now tinged with an Oriental lilt. One of Javert's stranger linguistic quirks was not that he spoke every language in his repertoire with an accent – that seemed to be endemic among immortals - but that he spoke each one with a different accent. Given his current identity, he was probably shooting for South Asian, but to Valjean's ears he sounded Turkish, like a child of the first post-war _Gastarbeiter_ generation. Another stranger in his own land: a variation on Javert's eternal theme.

"Police-work is not for me, you know that. I can't decide other people's fates so easily."

Javert smirked around a freshly lit menthol cigarette which he had pulled from behind his ear, like a street magician.

"There's something very Chinese about you, Jean. You always want to be at the very bottom of everything, like water. The Asian in me finds it charming."

Nearby a group of young ladies broke out into giggles. Javert turned his head and raised a black eyebrow at them. Three pairs of shifty eyes met him: two light and one dark. Then the brunette turned away to fiddle with the stereo and a little island on the beach was suddenly transported to the 1950s.

Valjean smiled. "The girls have nice music," he said.

"That's the Andrews Sisters," murmured Javert. The heat seemed to be putting him to sleep.

Valjean raised his eyebrows.

"You know them?"

Javert snorted.

"The music, love, not the birds. The Andrews Sisters and what's-his-name... They wrote songs for homesick American GIs stationed in Hawaii. And that guy is going to fall any second."

Valjean followed Javert's finger and watched a red wind sail topple slowly over. There was much garbled swearing and splashing from the crew - a muscular blond youth clad in bright red swimming trunks - and theatrical "Aw"s of pity from the girls. Valjean watched the young man struggle to right the sail and asked:

"Who was the fellow on your bike?"

"Just some guy. I picked him up about ten kilometers out of Freiburg. Poor bastard's rental car broke down on him, and he had a train to catch. So I decided to be nice for a change and gave him a lift."

"Why are you on that monster of yours anyway? Did Oli fix him up already?"

Jacket tossed a small handful of warm, powder-fine sand onto Valjean's bare stomach. "Don't call my Bucephalus a monster, you, gorilla."

"Beg your pardon."

"Yeah, he's fixed. It wasn't anything major. And I was going to head to Berlin on him, actually.

Given how things have turned out, you should probably come with."

"Won't that slow you down?"

"Don't make me laugh. Four days on a motorbike can get you just about anywhere east of Russia. I was planning to stop in Baden-Baden for the rest of the day, then tomorrow get to Heidelberg, stop for lunch and gas, ride on to Frankfurt, spend the night there, then plan on hitting a lake at some point the day after... But it's not set in stone or anything. So we'll ride for ten or eleven hours total instead of eight. Big deal."

"Are you sure I'm not too heavy for you?"

"Naw. Our GVWR is about twelve hundred pounds, subtract wet weight of six fifty... Don't worry about it. We'll have some wiggle room. You're not that fat," said Javert and tossed some more sand on Valjean's stomach.

Something chirruped from the depths of Javert's "pillow". Javert reached behind his head, deftly unzipped a slightly bulging chest pocket and flicked open a slim silver mobile, glancing briefly at the number before putting it to his ear.

"Hello, what do you want?" he grunted in accented English, lifting himself up on his elbows. "Is it urgent?... Fine. What is it?..." He listened for a bit, then sat up in the sand. "He wants to know _what_?" Javert's voice rose almost to a tenor. "You did send him my photo along with the file, right? … Uh huh… Uh huh… Well, then… Well, then, you tell that clown that I've already given him the time and the place, and I'm not going to waste my time with a quote-unquote detective that can't find a six-foot-three Indian in a crowd of Japanese without additional pointers. I will dress according to personal inclination and the Tokyo weather forecast. Is there anything else?... Well then, ciao."

Javert snapped the mobile shut and shoved it back into his pocket.

"Bloody politically correct nonsense bullshit pushers," he growled under his nose. "How do you like that, eh? He wants to know what I'll be wearing to the meeting in Tokyo. So that he can recognize me in the baggage claim, you see. As if I'm so difficult to recognize. Especially in Narita International. It's like that Soviet joke about the American spy in a Ukrainian village: '_Yakij zh ty garnij ukranskij hlopetz…_'"

Javert didn't finish: another Presence has washed over them both.


	2. Chapter 2

"Expecting someone?" said Javert through his teeth.

"N-no. I mean… yes. It's him again."

"'Him', who is 'him'?" murmured Javert surreptitiously scanning the beach and the trails for new arrivals. There was only a mother carrying a picnic basket and a baby, followed by two little boys in brightly colored swimming trunks with towels slung over their shoulders.

"The man who's been following me," explained Valjean.

"So that was it," said Javert and sighed loudly. "And here I was thinking naively that you just couldn't wait to see me."

Valjean reddened to the tips of his ears and opened his mouth to answer, but Javert preempted him:

"Forget it. I understand. It was a joke. You're nervous. I'd be nervous too."

The Presence disappeared.

"There, gone again," mumbled Valjean. "I'm sorry I'm ruining your vacation with this nonsense, Alex… I wasn't going to bother you with this until we were both in Berlin, but then yesterday he broke into my hotel room while I was out, and then I just couldn't stand it anymore. I thought I left him behind, but now here he is again!…"

"You said nothing over the phone."

"I didn't think it was safe."

"Do you think he followed you directly?"

"I have no idea, no idea...I hadn't felt him since I got into the train in Zurich. Ten oh two, Zurich-Basel-Freiburg. In Basel we had a ten-minute stop, so I got out and walked along the entire length of the train, and I'm telling you, Alex, there were no immortals on that train besides me. Did he come on the next train? But I paid cash everywhere, I used my other passport for ID, I cut my hair, I bought new clothes even! How did he know where I ended up? No, no, he couldn't have followed me - I would've felt him. Lord Christ Almighty! I abandoned my luggage; I threw away my phone... How did he know?.."

Valjean ran out of breath. Javert was still for a second, then stood up and began cleaning the sand off his shirt and trousers.

"I think we better move this conversation someplace more private. The inn bar is open, has private booths, and should be empty this early in the afternoon. Get your stuff and let's go."

"But he's somewhere close! What if he walks in?"

Javert shrugged and put on his jacket.

"So what if he does? You don't seriously think he will attempt to decapitate you in the middle of a restaurant, do you? With a chef and three waitresses and a drinking buddy of yours watching?"

He started up the trail.

"Come on, you scaredy cat!" he called out without turning his head. "You scaredy gorilla. Let's go have a Radler."

* * *

Javert's prediction proved correct: the bar was empty. A dour-faced waitress brought them both pleasantly chilled Radlers and marched off to the patio armed with a dishrag and a bucket of soapy water.

When they were finally alone, Javert insisted Valjean empty the stein halfway first and then start talking. Valjean downed half of his shandy with robotic obedience and found that his mouth began forming words without his leave, as though he'd drunk straight brandy instead of beer and lemonade.

He told Javert everything. About how the strange Presence began weaving in and out of his range two weeks ago, then followed him from France through Switzerland and now to Germany. About the midnight phone calls with nothing but hyena laughter on the other side. About the cryptic letters dropped into his mailbox and the disturbing "presents" left on his doorstep. Through it all, he desperately hoped for Javert to interrupt his narrative with reassurances or even mockery for being such a ninny. But by the time he had gotten to his discovery of a decapitated stray mutt on his kitchen counter, Javert's face was an impenetrable mask of authoritative attentiveness, and Valjean understood that things were very bad indeed -at least as bad as he had thought and perhaps even worse.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note 1: The chat line in italics is supposed to be in Russian, but I didn't want to interrupt the flow with footnotes. Valjean's chat nickname means "aging eagle" in Russian. It was supposed to have an underscore - " orel underscore nemolodoj" -, but fanfiction dot net has a retarded text editor. It also killed all the proper chat formatting.

Author's Note 2: I know script has been made illegal on fanfiction dot net, but I figure this should be all right, since it's an actual storytelling device, not the fic form.

Author's Note 3: To my wonderful (and so far sole) reviewer, Cha Cha1: This is actually based on the book "Les Miserables." I can't stand the musical.

* * *

Starting up Maximus Pro… 

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**From orelnemolodoj to acerimmer666**

21:15 orelnemolodoj: Are you there, Alex?

21:15 Auto response: The dashing, drop-dead-gorgeous bloke known as Ace Rimmer is busy saving the world. He might make it back to his keyboard at some point, perhaps even in one piece. Keep hope alive.

21:18 orelnemolodoj: …

21:18 Auto response: The dashing, drop-dead-gorgeous bloke known as Ace Rimmer is busy saving the world. He might make it back to his keyboard at some point, perhaps even in one piece. Keep hope alive.

21:21 orelnemolodoj: …

21:21 Auto response: The dashing, drop-dead-gorgeous bloke known as Ace Rimmer is busy saving the world. He might make it back to his keyboard at some point, perhaps even in one piece. Keep hope alive.

21:25 orelnemolodoj: … Please answer me.

21:25 Auto response: The dashing, drop-dead-gorgeous bloke known as Ace Rimmer is busy saving the world. He might make it back to his keyboard at some point, perhaps even in one piece. Keep hope alive.

21:30 acerimmer666: heyo

21:30 orelnemolodoj: Hi!

21:30 acerimmer666: am I late? i thought we said 9:30?

21:30 orelnemolodoj: We did. I was just keeping hope alive. :)

21:30 acerimmer666: heh.

21:31 acerimmer666: so, miss me?

21:31 orelnemolodoj: Yes. :)

21:31 acerimmer666: nice handle, btw

21:31 orelnemolodoj: What handle?

21:31 acerimmer666: headdesk

21:32 acerimmer666: you teakettle

21:32 acerimmer666: nice name.

21:32 orelnemolodoj: Oh. Thank you.

21:32 acerimmer666: been rereading Pushkin i see

21:33 orelnemolodoj: How did you know?

21:33 acerimmer666: what's tjhere to know? orel nemolodoj --> orel molodoj --> _"behind rusty bars and in dampness i dwell, a young-hearted eagle brought up in a cell"_

21:33 orelnemolodoj: Wow.

21:33 acerimmer666: takes a bow

21:34 orelnemolodoj: applauds and tosses a rose on stage

21:34 acerimmer666: cute

21:36 acerimmer666: well?

21:36 orelnemolodoj: Well what?

21:36 acerimmer666: you summoned me my liege?

21:37 orelnemolodoj: Listen, are you terribly busy?

21:37 acerimmer666: if you are being stupid, then yes, i'm very busy and my rate is 5 green dollars a minute.

21:37 acerimmer666: are you being stupid?

21:38 orelnemolodoj: I don't know.

21:38 acerimmer666: okay, now you're making me worried. what's going on?

21:39 orelnemolodoj: I want us to meet as soon as possible.

21:39 acerimmer666: what, before Berlin?

21:39 orelnemolodoj: Yes.

21:39 acerimmer666: you can't wait four days?

21:40 orelnemolodoj: Frankly, I'd rather not wait even four hours at this point.

21:40 acerimmer666: what the hell happened?

21:41 orelnemolodoj: I don't know.

21:41 acerimmer666: eh? come again?

21:42 orelnemolodoj: Honestly. I don't know. I need you to tell me.

21:42 acerimmer666: are you in immediate danger?

21:42 orelnemolodoj: I don't think so.

21:42 acerimmer666: fine, be mysterious. when and where?

21:44 orelnemolodoj: Remember the village in Hell's Valley that made you laugh so much?

21:44 acerimmer666: ;;;;; - ?

21:44 acerimmer666: when?

21:47 orelnemolodoj: 1976. Summer. We even took photos at the train station, remember? You couldn't even straighten out all the way you were laughing so hard.

21:47 acerimmer666: aha.

21:47 acerimmer666: heh heh. yes i remember. sort of. vaguely. i was so stoned then, i'm sort of amazed i remember anything at all about that

21:48 orelnemolodoj: What, the village, our trip or the whole summer? 8-)

21:49 acerimmer666: the whole year, compadre, the whole year. 8-F

21:53 orelnemolodoj: I could be there tomorrow at ten in the morning. As far as I recall, there's an inn across from the station, and there's a food kiosk a bit further down the hill. I'll be at the bottom of the trail that leads from the kiosk downwards. It's well-traveled, you can't miss it.

21:53 acerimmer666: no go. i'm stuck in freiburg with bucephalus in the shop. oli promised to finsih with him by midday. i'll try to wrap everything up asap, but even so i don't think i can be there before two.

21:54 orelnemolodoj: Who's Oli?

21:54 acerimmer666: a crazy mechanic with thinning infra-orange hair.

21:54 orelnemolodoj: Gotcha.

21:55 acerimmer666: where are you now anyway?

21:55 orelnemolodoj: Zurich. The Hauptbahnhof.

21:55 acerimmer666: where are you headed?

21:56: orelnemolodoj: I haven't decided yet.

21:56: acerimmer666: interesting...

21:57 acerimmer666: have to sign off now. keep a stiff upper lip, okay? i'll see you tomorrow at two. get some sun, relax, enjoy the prettiness of nature before it's all burned to a crisp.

21:57 orelnemolodoj: Is it very hot in Freiburg?

21:58 acerimmer666: no better than in Zurich i imagine. it's long passed "hot" in my opinion – we're now well into microwave oven stage. Kerala was a piece of cake compared to baden-wuerttemberg this summer.

21:58 acerimmer666: one of my texas colleagues couldn't stand it, wrapped up his report early and ran off to berlin. of course then he'd dicovered berlin was about the same level of ass-hot as the south of germany.

21:58 acerimmer666: (specifically phoned me to bitch about it)

21:59 acerimmer666: so he ran farther north to Copenhagen and called me from a pay phone or something in the airport (cell phone was dead apparently) screaming like banshee

21:59 acerimmer666: "Aaaylex, you gotta to come onup here! They got AC in this town!"

21:59 acerimmer666: 8-D

22:00 orelnemolodoj: And you refused to work with me on that global warming petition. See what social inaction does?

22:00 acerimmer666: yes, it allows me to work unihinibited at my proper job and earn enough money to rent a flat with central air in freiburg instead of traipsing off to another country.

22:00 acerimmer666: grins

22:01 acerimmer666: gotta run, they're already ringing me.

22:01 acerimmer666: why does everything have to happen at stammtisch? i swear we get more brain work done at the beer garden at night than at the actual conference.

22:01 orelnemolodoj: Must be the cooler temperatures.

22:02 acerimmer666: yeah must be.

22:02 acerimmer666:_ also dann_

22:02 acerimmer666: ciao, "my bloody comrade."

22:02 orelnemolodoj: You mean "my mournful comrade."

22:03 acerimmer666: 8-P

22:03 acerimmer666: be seeing you.

**acerimmer666 has signed off.**


	4. Chapter 4

_ringtone_

_"Mueller. Go ahead."_

"Mr. Mueller? It's Crumbs."

_"Good evening, Mister Crumbs! It's great to finally hear from you. Where are you calling from?"_

" Zurich, sir. A café on Bahnhof-Quai."

_"Is the coffee good?"_

"Well, ugh, I'm drinking a coke, actually, so... I don't know."

_"I take it you have news for me?"_

"You bet. You're going to love this."

_"I'm all ears, Mister Crumbs."_

"First things first: what about the money?"

_"Ten thousand dollars had been transferred into your account at Citibank as of the morning of today's business day. Make sure to collect all your receipts, and the incurred expenses will be paid as well."_

"Great. All right, so around nine o'clock in the evening the subject left his suite running. That was my doing - I left him another present in the bathroom, and I guess his nerves just couldn't take it. He just couldn't get out of that place fast enough, I tell you. I thought at first we were just going to do another tour-de-france type chase through the mountains with him, but he must've been pretty spooked, 'cause he actually went ahead and called Khan, just like you said he would. He obviously suspects that his line is compromised, so all he did over the phone is schedule a chat conference with him. Around nine fifteen he headed over to the Hauptbahnhof and had a chat with Khan through instant messaging. That lasted until ten oh five, at which point the subject closed the laptop and headed over to the counter to buy a ticket."

_"Excellent work. Where are they meeting?"_

"Yeah... I... See, that's where it sort of fell through."

_"Explain."_

"See, I got an excellent view of the screen with the binoculars you gave me. Problem is, they didn't ever mention the place outright. Subject is clearly getting smarter on us. He said: "Let's see each other at the place in Hell's Valley where we had so much fun in '76" or something like that. I got the time - two in the afternoon - but they didn't ever mention the place, so... I don't really have a choice at this point, I have to keep shadowing him."

_"No, no more shadowing. What did you say the year was?"_

"1976. It's supposed to be some crazy fun place or something, 'cause the subject said your man Khan laughed himself stupid when they were there, but it's probably just an inside joke or something. It's also supposed to have "pretty nature," whatever the hell that means. Maybe it's a nude beach or something. I haven't a clue."

_"It doesn't matter. The year and the season are more than enough. Our records of both the subject and his companion go back many decades. It's simply a matter of having the appropriate files pulled up from the archives and doing a cross-check. You did well. "_

"Thank you, sir. I still don't understand why I couldn't just take care of the subject on my own – he's literally across the street from me right now. And then I could dispatch his boyfriend while he's on his way. How hard could it be to arrange a natural-looking motorcycle accident in the Black Forest? A little decapitation has been known to happen on these treacherous cliffs."

_"Categorically verbotten, Mister Crumbs. In this case, the method is as important as the effect, if not more so. There will be no ad-libbing."_

"Suit yourself."

_"I extend my gratitude for your competent work. Now your job is to disappear from their radar. For good, Mr. Crumbs. You must take care not to come within their combined sense perimeter again. I want you to head back to your apartment and wait there until eight o'clock tomorrow morning. At that time, you will go to Zurich Airport and purchase a plane ticket to Paris on the first available flight. You will be reimbursed."_

"Yes, sir."

_"When you get to Paris, I want you to come straight to my office. Bring all your receipts, every single one, no matter how trivial. My secretary will write you the check. I don't want you to be obligated to have paid for anything on this business trip, including the cola you're drinking right now. Mister Crumbs!"_

"Yessir!"

_"This is arch-important. Do not make yourself seen or felt to the subject again. Finish the assignment competently, and you will be compensated beyond the agreed upon sum. Fail, and you yourself will be finished. I can arrange it so that you will end your days in a military research facility. All it would take is one phone call. Do you understand, Mister Crumbs?"_

"Yes sir, I do."

_"Good-bye, Mister Crumbs. Thank you for flushing out the game for me."_

"Good-bye, Mr. Mueller. And good hunting."

_soft laughter_

_"Indeed."_

_click_


	5. Chapter 5

Ithilmir: Patience, young Padawan. All that needs be explained will be explained. :)

* * *

Javert twirled the cellophane sandwich baggie in his long fingers. His face bore an expression of vague disgust, as if the bag contained a squished scorpion instead of a business card with the blue Citibank logo.

"_'There can be only One_,'" he read out loud in accented English. "Predictable," he added, dropping the baggie onto the center of the table and spearing more ravioli with his fork. "Make me happy - tell me you didn't touch it with your bare hands."

"Of course I didn't. He left this in my mailbox two days after he hung the bunch of dead rats up on the kitchen light fixture. Since then I've been well-stocked with surgical gloves."

"Excellent," said Javert and shoveled more food into his mouth.

"I wonder why he chose a business card to write the message on. It has his name on it, after all."

"What makes you think it's his card?" asked Javert with interest.

"Well... Oh... Okay, I guess it doesn't have to be."

"Of course it doesn't have to be. Ten to one it was lifted off a teller's desk. They have whole stacks of them available for customers."

"So he banks with Citibank." Valjean finished the dregs of his second Radler. "Well, I guess that's something."

"You keep saying 'he', 'he'. Are you sure that it's a man following you?"

"I somehow can't picture a woman leaving decapitated animals in my house," shuddered Valjean. "It's just… too vile."

Javert flicked a breadcrumb at him.

"How many times must I tell you? Don't ever underestimate the potential vileness of women. So you don't know it's a man?"

"I think I do… I think I've seen him, but I could easily be mistaken. Two weeks ago, the first time I felt him, I was sitting on a balcony in Marseilles reading, and I saw someone dart into a shop across the street. A tallish fellow with blond hair, but obviously dyed blond, you know? - dark in the middle and bright yellow at the tips. And I think I saw him again in Zurich on the day of my arrival. I was on a moving walkway, and I turned around because I thought someone had called my name. They were calling someone else, but it appeared to me that I saw him again. He was walking away from a bookshop and flipping through a magazine.

"It 'appeared' to him…" Grumbled Javert. "When things begin appearing, it's best to cross oneself." He scratched at the back of his head with two fingers. "And then after one crosses oneself, even more things might appear."

"I could've been mistaken," easily conceded Valjean.

"He could've been mistaken," echoed Javert again in a murmur. Then suddenly, he set his stein hard on the table:

"Don't be stupid with me, Valjean! If there's one thing I hate, it's when you are pretending to be stupid! I understand hair, but can you not tell one Presence from another? Was it or was it not the same man?"

"I don't know. Look, the first time I saw him, there was a Presence. The second time I saw him, there wasn't! I guess I must've been too far away from him. It looked like the same man, but at that distance, I have only hunches for evidence. The way he walked, the way he held his arms close to his body, the length of his strides… The hair, obviously. And the rest of the times, he didn't make himself visible -just felt."

"Was the Presence you felt just now on the beach the one from Marseille or not?"

"Yes, it definitely was. Of that I am certain."

"Did you two ever make eye contact?"

"No. He didn't seem to take any note of me. He just walked into the shop and began walking around. I was surprised: I can't help jumping every time I feel a Presence, but he seemed perfectly unperturbed. I thought that perhaps it wasn't him, so I sat there for another couple of minutes trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate with the Presence buzzing in my skull like that. I went back inside and immediately stopped feeling it."

Javert knit his brows, then pulled a short, thin chrome stick out of one of the small cylindrical pockets under his breast-bone – the ones that Valjean thought might have been designed with some sort of ammunition in mind. The stick telescoped open into an even thinner pen. A slightly wider pocket yielded a very narrow leather-bound notebook.

"You said 'distance'," he said, pushing the empty plate in front of him to the side. "How far would you estimate the balcony on which you stood from the shop door?"

"I don't know… Not very far, but not very close either. A four-lane two way street, with a green divider in between. Wide sidewalks with bus stops on both sides. Proper bus stops, with glass booths and everything."

Javert paused with the tip of his silver space pen hovering above the delicately lined paper.

"That's… let's see, that's four into seven, plus the divider makes thirty or so, plus the sidewalks, thirty-four meters. That sound about right?"

"I suppose so."

"Do not suppose." Javert sounded irritated. "Leave supposing to the amateurs. Are you an architect or not? Answer precisely. Does this or does this not represent the apparent width of the street hereby discussed as measured from the door of a house on side A to that of the directly opposing house on side B?"

"Yes. Perhaps even a bit more than that – the divider was pretty wide."

"Let's say, thirty-five meters, then." Javert began constructing and labeling various geometric figures. "How far apart would your balcony and the shop door have been if they'd been on the same street?"

"Almost none - we were directly opposite each other."

"And the height of your balcony?"

"Third story, so...about ten meters"

"Ah hah." Javert punished the delicately lined page with more inky gashes. "So the direct horizontal distance between you would have been, thirty-five in the square plus one hundred, to the one-half power… Let's see, under root one thousand three hundred and twenty-five…" Javert scribbled furiously for several seconds, then pronounced: "Well, it doesn't matter, since we need the square anyway: thirteen twenty five to the one-half gives us just a bit over thirty-six." He bit the end of his pen, then released it and repeated: "Ah hah."

"What?"

Javert took a breath, then slowly exhaled a low-pitched question:

"Valjean, how many heads have you taken in your life?"

"How many… heads…? What on Earth do you mean?"

Javert sighed and leaned in closer, clutching the pen to his breast as if he were afraid of someone running up and snatching it away:

"You know perfectly well what I mean. How many immortals have you decapitated in your life? How many Quickenings have you absorbed?"

Valjean's eyelids twitched.

"None, of course. I don't believe in all that nonsense, and well you know it."

"I do know it. I was just checking. So, no heads?"

"None."

"That's interesting..."

Javert leaned back again, collapsed his nifty writing implement between his thumb and forefinger and re-introduced it gingerly into one of the many cylindrical compartments above his waist.

"What?"

"Did you know that I had to take a head several months ago?"

Valjean's face fell.

"My God... Who was it?"

"I have no idea. Some thug accosted me in an alley in Bombay with the same "There-can-be-only-One" nonsense - which, incidentally, sounds positively silly in Bhindi. In the end, I simply couldn't risk having him follow me around."

"So you killed him?"

"What choice did I have? He was swinging a razor-sharp blade at me."

"You could've just killed him and left him to revive somewhere."

"Why? So that he could go after someone else? Someone less capable of defending themselves? Or stalk me around the city for the whole time I'm there? No, Valjean, no. He knew what he was asking for - he challenged me - he lost. All perfectly fair, according to the rules of the Game."

"I thought you didn't believe in the Game."

Javert leaned forward once more; an ugly grimace twisted his face.

"Oh yeah? Well, guess what, I don't believe in Allah either, and yet for some reason that didn't stop two terrorist shitheads from blowing up one of my London colleagues last July and crippling two others. The world is bloody unfair like that."

"So what do I do?" said Valjean quietly. "I won't kill him. That's out of the question."

"I think you've already made your decision, Valjean," said Javert and stood up, dropping a crisp bill on the table and taking his jacket off the back of the wooden bench. "You called me."


	6. Chapter 6

"All right, now that's just rude," said Javert as the Presence made itself felt again. "We're having lunch for fuck's sake."

"But we're already done."

"So? He doesn't know that! We could very well be having desert at this very moment. In fact, I think I'll order some right now, just to make a point."

"Well, really, there's no good reason in putting it off. He's still going to be out there when we come out."

"True enough." Javert scanned the landscape outside their window. "There he is, by the way," said he and giggled.

"Where?" asked Valjean and almost got an eye poked out by a long, dark finger.

"Right there, by the Imbiss. The sunofabitch is eating ice cream."

"Shall we go out to meet him now?"

"Might as well," shrugged Javert. "Incidentally, how far do you think that Imbiss is from our booth?"

"Fourty meters, fourty-five maybe."

"And yet here we are, enjoying his buzz in our skulls."

"Yes, that is strange. I usually can't sense anyone beyond thirty meters or so."

"Thirty-six," corrected Javert. "We calculated, remember?"

"We could've been off by a bit."

"We could have," agreed Javert, pushing open the door to the patio. "But I really rather doubt it. Well, at least he's not being intentionally rude – there's no way in hell he's actually feeling us at this distance. I suppose he thinks he's being very furtive and inconspicuous, the silly sod."

"He noticed us! Look, he's waving," said Valjean. And indeed, the young man was giving the pair a genial-looking salute with the hand that wasn't holding a poisonously red popsicle.

Javert scowled. "Are you quite sure he's out to kill you, _bhaiya_? Seems to me he might be out for something else entirely."

"What do you mean?"

"Check out how he's going at that icey," smirked Javert. "He's not so much eating it as giving it a blowjob."

"Oh, for God's sakes," sighed Valjean and quickened his pace.

"Hey, don't get mad, you big nonsense, it was just a joke!"

* * *

"Howdy!" said the young man in English before biting his now quite soft and dripping popsicle in half with even white teeth. "Wha'?" he asked, seeing Valjean's frown.

"How can you eat that horrid rubbish? Do you even know what they use for food coloring in those things?" said Valjean in a concerned, almost paternal tone.

The young man laughed. "I'll live."

Javert barked out a laugh. "Well! Quite the little optimist, aren't you?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I can think of some reasons," said Javert, leaning onto the table with both elbows. The table, which was clearly not constructed with such stress in mind, tipped at an alarming angle. "For starters, you've really pissed off my friend."

"Pissed him off?" The young man laughed again. "Yeah right! Scared shitless, you mean."

"I wouldn't say 'scared.' You made him concerned, let's put it that way."

"Hey, where are y'all guys from? I thought you were supposed to be French, but he sounds Irish and you're what, Indian?"

"At the moment, yes."

"That's cool. Do you speak Indian?"

Javert tsked regretfully.

"I'm afraid I don't. I do, however, speak Hindi, Bengali, Marati and Tamil, so it's not entirely hopeless."

"Oh, sorry. My brother's dating an Indian chick; you kinda sound like her, except not as weepy."

"That's good to know."

"That's funny, though, they told me y'all were French."

"Who told you that?" Cursory interest.

"It don't matter who, I just heard y'all were, that's all."

"I see." Javert stood up. "Well, we should probably set a time and a place, no? I mean, you can't be thinking of extending a Challenge here on the spot, right?"

"Naw. There's a clearing about two miles north of the station. It's pretty secluded, and there aren't any cops or houses or anything around for like a mile. Middle of the night, no one will know a thing. Three a.m. okay?"

"Fine by me."

"What about him?"

Javert turned his head.

"Well, 'him', say something."

" Three o'clock is fine."

"Perfect!" smiled Javert. "You've got a whole evening to set your affairs in order."

"Hah hah, you're funny. I can take him in like, five seconds."

"What makes you think that?"

The young man rubbed his neck in thought. "Well, he ran away, didn't he? He wouldn't have done it if he could take me."

* * *

"You've got to admit, he's being pretty logical, in his own stupid way."

"I'm still not fighting him."

"Frankly, I wasn't going to fight him either, but now I'm concerned. These mysterious "who"s that told him we are supposed to be French concern me a lot. My last French identity met its untimely end in Auschwitz."

"It could've been another Immortal. Maybe even his teacher."

"Let's hope so," mumbled Javert and turned the ignition key.


	7. Chapter 7

Javert returned from the bathroom looking like his usual self. Valjean looked up at him from his work and smiled.

"You kind of look like a Siamese cat now. Bluish eyes, dark face… A bit spooky."

Javert sighed and set the box with the contact lenses down on the low night-table near his bed.

"Well, there you go. You just answered your own question."

"What question?"

"The one you just asked me two minutes ago. 'Why the colored contacts?'"

"Oh, right… But surely you couldn't wear them _all_ the time while you were in India?…"

There was a pause. Valjean turned around. The smug expression on Javert's face conveyed plainly that, yes, he could, and he did, and he loved every damn minute of it.

"Can't people tell?"

"Not really. On the two or three occasions when someone actually asked whether my contacts are tinted, I told them that my eyes are sensitive to the light, which is perfectly true, and that the contacts provide sun protection, which is also perfectly true – they are prescription, not cosmetic. It's not my fault they didn't guess to elaborate on the question."

"Why bother with contacts at all?"

"Gee, why do you think? Maybe because I don't exactly make a convincing Indian with blue-gray eyes?"

"You don't _have_ to be Indian..."

Javert flopped back onto the bed. The springs under the sagging mattress creaked pitifully.

"Look, can you just shut up about my eyes for a minute? My eyes are not the problem right now. There is a maniac armed with a sword after you. _That's_ the problem right now. Not my eyes."

"I don't really have any creative solutions to the maniac problem," said Valjean, straightening out the blueprint, which had once again curled in on itself.

"Aren't even a bit curious how he found you again?"

"Of course I am," shrugged Valjean, as he lined up the ruler for another pencil stroke. "But how is that going to make a difference now that we've already made a date to fight?"

"That date may yet be the least of our problems," mumbled Javert and reached for the black duffel bag at the foot of the bed. "And you are entirely wrong about the tracing. That's vitally important. _Arch_-vitally, even. You said you exchanged your entire luggage?"

"Yes. I thought he might've put a _beetle_ in there or something."

Javert raised his eyes and for a minute regarded Valjean with an expression of contemptuous mirth.

"A _bug_, you mean."

"Yes. That."

"Ugh huh. Don't try to be all hep with me, Valjean," added Javert, ruffling through the clothes. "I know you too well to buy it. If you don't know what the thing is called in English, then don't embarrass yourself -just say 'concealed listening device.'" He pulled out the laptop and lifted it up: "That new as well?"

"Yes. Well, not really. I bought it two years ago for work."

"If you were that worried about being traced, why didn't you get rid of it as well?"

"I can't…I, I couldn't," said Valjean helplessly. "I have so many blueprints saved on it! Not just mine, but everyone's, the whole firm's! Everything we've drawn up for the past two years is in there."

"You should have bought a thumb drive and transferred the data," said Javert mercilessly.

"But there's so much data..."

"You should've bought two thumb drives then. Come on, this is two-thousand-six. There is no way you have more than ten gigs of blueprints on that machine."

"I didn't really think of it…"

"Oh, come on! You didn't think? What a load of bull. When do you ever _stop_ thinking? Your whole life is one evasion after another, and you're going to tell me you didn't _think_?"

"All right, fine! I did think about it. I just decided that he couldn't trace me through it."

"A supremely stupid decision."

Javert's face, tinted blue with the reflection of the boot-up screen, was a study in irritability.

"Oh look, no password needed to log in!" he continued dersively. "How can anyone that smart be that stupid, tell me that, Mr. Hotshot?"

"Do I need a password?"

"Do you leave the laptop unattended at any time including night time?"

"Of course. I don't sleep with it."

"And you probably don't shower with it either. Or go grocery shopping with it. Or go to the pub with it."

"All right, yes, I've left it unattended before. So what? It was in a locked apartment."

"Which, if you recall, your blonde fan had absolutely no trouble breaking into."

Valjean jumped up and joined his friend on the bed.

"Oh my God, did he hack into it?"

"'Oh my God' indeed."

"If he stole our plans…"

"Fuck the plans!" interrupted Javert loudly. "Fuck 'em. I don't give a flying squirrel shit. Your plans and all your architect pals can rot in Frank Lloyd Wright's uneven-pancake hell as far as I'm concerned. You are worried about all the wrong things. What you _should _be worried about is whether or not he'd downloaded a tracing program to your hard drive!"

"Can't you check?"

"Nope. All good tracking software is undetectable and, unfortunately for you, uninstallable. Wouldn't be much good if it were otherwise, really. And it wouldn't be too hard to have the company switch it on once he'd purchased it."

Javert flipped the laptop closed and lay back, raising a vacant gaze to the rotating blades of the ceiling fan.

"Other than that, I'm out of ideas. Could've been your mobile, but you said you switched that at some point half-way through."

"Do you think he'll tell us if we ask him?"

"Maybe. Probably. He'll probably want to gloat if it's true. And if it's not true…"

Javert held a disconcerting pause.

"Then what?"

"Then there materializes a very healthy chance that you and I are both fucked."


	8. Chapter 8

"Why?"

Javert didn't answer. He was staring with a perplexed expression at the paddles of the fan going round and round underneath the high beige ceiling.

"Why are we… fucked?" repeated Valjean with some effort.

"Because, hotshot, if the kid _didn't_ hack into your computer and _didn't_ install any tracing programs to it, then there are only two distinct possibilities for how he managed this feat, both of which make me more than a bit uneasy. Either there is a team out looking for you, with sufficient resources to trace you across the main railroad nerve centers of France, Switzerland and Germany, which is a pretty weird and scary idea. Or someone must've told him where we ended up." Javert paused briefly. "Or it could even be both. A team who knew where you were going. Somehow. How?"

"Perhaps from our communications? Something I said over the phone could've been overheard?"

"But you said nothing of importance over the phone. You told me, and I'm quoting you exactly, 'We have to talk urgently, please meet me on Maximus at nine-thirty pm CEST.' That was it."

"Then from the chat itself?"

"Was anyone seated close to you when it took place?"

"No, I made sure of that."

"Was your back to a wall?"

"Yes. Wait… no, it wasn't. It was to the outer wall of the station. A glass wall. A huge tinted window. Someone must've looked in on me. But I haven't felt anyone nearby…"

"Then either a mortal or someone with very excellent binoculars. So what follows from that? What follows?.."

The question trailed off into a mumble. Javert's eye wandered restlessly about the room, as though he were seeing it for the second time in his life after having been left in it once for a long, scary night as a small child. Finally, his gaze fell upon a dish of thick crystal standing on the upper shelf of the bookcase and propping up several small, fat yellow Reclam volumes, the outermost of which was Brant's _Das Narrenschiff_.

Javert rolled off the bed, walked up to the bookcase and picked up from the dish a string of large, uneven, translucent green beads. Valjean recognized the jade rosary he bought for his friend many years ago and couldn't keep himself from smiling.

"You kept them!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know if you would. So you did like them after all?"

In lieu of an answer, Javert lifted his arm to his chest and began clacking the beads against one another in a languid rhythm.

"If you think about it, the idea is kind of silly," he went on as if Valjean hadn't spoken. "If there's a team out there, why did they send this particular guy to be their avatar? He is useless as a tracker. You sensed him several times, spotted him several more times. So it could be that this group in fact wanted you to know you were being followed and work yourself up into a proper panic. But you also matched his Presence to his face and figure at least twice. I.e., you have his positive ID in your pocket. You could potentially make his life hell with that kind of information. And yet he didn't seem worried."

Another bead clacked under Javert's long thumb.

"Also, it is apparent that he is a brand new immie without a single head to his name – he doesn't start feeling you until you're within the thirty-one meter range, which is the standard initial radius. Not much to panic about, unless you are also completely useless with a sword. Which you are, no offence. And it seems that they knew that."

Another energetic clack.

"But why would they need you to panic? This makes no sense. Even if they have only have a perfunctory acquaintance with your personal history, they will know that you are _emphatically_ not making yourself a part of the Game. It's not like you're some ace of sword-fighting whom they could be hoping to bring off balance."

Clack.

"Unless, of course, they knew that as well. In which case…"

Clack.

"In which case, they were probably not after you at all."

Clack.

"They knew _exactly _what you were going to do once you'd been cornered."

Clack. Javert lowered his arm.

"It was me they wanted to find."


	9. Chapter 9

Author's Note: Super short chapter that really should've got tacked on to the previous one.

* * *

"But that's ridiculous," countered Valjean weakly. "Why would they use me to get to you? You're a public figure, for God's sake. You have an office in London, a secretary, business cards. You attend conferences that get publicized months in advance. You have two public phone numbers and an official e-mail account posted on a government site! And you're telling me they went through all this nonsense with dead rats and dogs just to have me call you up?" 

"Apparently." Javert was frowning. "Any ideas why?"

"Perhaps they needed me to do it for them for some reason... Maybe they are too high profile to follow you directly?"

Javert clicked his tongue.

"What the hell does that mean, though, 'high profile'? A well-known con? Al-Qaeda? The US Department of Homeland Security? No, this is not the right direction. They reached you, after all. Don't let's think of who. Let's think of why."

"What on earth do you mean by that? You can't separate the who from the why!"

Javert shrugged.

"Sure you can. Proposition one: many people want me dead. Proposition two: Mister Smith of Smith-and-Wesson wants me dead. Conclusion: Smith might kill me. But it certainly doesn't have to be Smith."

Javert raised his eyes to contemplate the water streaks on the ceiling plaster.

"If they had continued to track you peacefully, they would've had you. You were doing a piss-poor job of evading them, and you weren't really protecting yourself and your turf too well. If they really wanted you dead, you'd have been dead already. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Valjean.

"And my little incident with that young punk in Mumbai proves conclusively that I am also not beyond a sword's reach? So if they wanted _me_ dead, I'd have been dead already as well, correct?"

"Correct."

Javert nodded. "Correct. So what does that mean?"

Valjean wiped his face with his palm. "That you're an infuriating man who refuses to talk straight."

Javert grinned, snapped him lightly on the arm with the rosaries and turned away.

"That's the ticket. Stiff upper lip, boy!"

"Would you just answer me? This is our lives we're talking about here!"

Suddenly, Javert twirled around, eyes huge and wild with excitement.

"Ah hah!" he exclaimed, gesturing towards Valjean again with both hands. "So you see it too, now?"

The confusion on Valjean's face made it plain that he did not.

"'They told me y'all were French,' Valjean. Don't you see? 'Y'all.'Both of us. Why would they say anything about _me_ if they were really after _you _and you alone"

Javert clacked a bead with such force that the sound echoed off the bare walls of the room.

"They want us both together!" concluded Javert. "Whatever it is they want, they want from both of us at the same time. That's what all of this means. Now, does that put you in mind of anything?"

Valjean sat for a moment staring into his hands. "No," he finally said.

"Liar." Not an accusation - a simple statement of fact.

"...Yes."

"Exactly. That's why they want us together. It's the only thing that makes sense."

For a few moments the only noise breaking the silence in the room was the mild whirring of the ceiling fan. Then Javert turned around and went to dig in the pockets of his discarded jacket.

"I have a phone call to make. Let's come down to the kitchen. The speaker phone is there. I want you to hear this."

"Whom are you calling?"

"Someone I should've introduced you to a long time ago. Let's hope he's got his cell phone with him."


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note: After some contemplation, I decided that this chapter needed to be re-written. There was something fundamentally wrong with Javert's phone conversation, and although it won't really matter one way or another to all of you readers, it bugged me to high hell. I've corrected it now, hence the re-post. Now I can forge on with the next chapter.

* * *

"Do you want tea?" 

Valjean contemplated the half-crushed packet of Ceylon premium in front of him, shook his head and shut the cupboard door.

"I don't really have much else to offer you," said Javert, raising his shoulder to clamp the lacquered red receiver to his ear and untangling the kinks in the phone cord. "I've pretty much emptied my stocks this morning. There might be some canned mushroom soup under the sink, if you dig deeply enough." He pressed the speakerphone button and hung the receiver back up at the beep.

The phone rang four times before it was picked up.

"_Hello?" _said a polished, youthful baritone.

Javert grinned, took in a lungful of air and suddenly growled out in Russian:

"_Citizens-bandits!"_

Valjean started.

"_You are surrounded! Both exits have been blocked!"_

There was a brief pause, and then a rather different voice - flatter, throatier and higher-pitched - sneered back, also in Russian:

"_Who's that barking up there?"_

Javert's back muscles relaxed visibly under the white tank top.

"_With you, pig," _he continued in the same hoarse, menacing tone, "_is not barking but speaking Captain Zheglov!"_ He lifted his eyes briefly from the speakerphone and winked at Valjean. "_You've heard of him perhaps?"_

The person on the other side of the line fell silent. Javert waited, eyes big and teeth bared in anticipation. Several seconds passed, and then the polished baritone heard earlier said breathily and once again in English:

"_Perfect."_

Javert threw both arms up into the air, let out a wild whoop and stomped out a brief but enthusiastic chechetka on the kitchen floor tiles.

"_I mean… wow. Spot on. You could've been a recording... Wait, did you?.."_

"No no, it was all me. Adsum qui feci. Unassisted by modern technology."

The voice on the other line paused.

"_Say something else then,"_ it demanded peevishly. _"Say the line about Sharapov's scary face."_

Javert cleared his throat, closed his eyes briefly and rumbled another Russian sentence into the speakerphone:

"_What a mug you've got on you, Volodya... it's scary to see."_

"_That wasn't bad, but it was nowhere near the other lines," _pronounced the baritone, after a moment's contemplation. _"Admit it, you were holding the phone near a computer speaker that first time."_

"I **swear** to you it was me."

"_Hmm… Well, in that case, you better tell me what calamity has transpired."_

The corners of Javert's mouth dropped. "What do you mean?"

"_I mean, something obviously must've happened to upset you. And given that you're not upset too easily, it must've been something big. Think about it: you nailed Zheglov's lines when he's going out of his mind with worry over Sharapov' fate in the nest of thieves and murderers, but did only a passable job on the ones he speaks in relief when Sharapov emerges from the basement unharmed."_

Javert listened on with a grave face.

"_So I'd say tha… whoev… you're worried about is …till in the ba…ment,"_ continued the British accent blithely over a slight hiss of static. _"Well? Did I …et it right?"_

Javert glanced in Valjean's direction and admitted:

"Yeah. He's still in the basement."

"_And …ow may I be of s…rvice in the …atter of getting him out?"_

"You're breaking up a bit," frowned Javert. "Where are you?"

"_...anhattan, Union …uare. Hold on, I'll move…" _

It was becoming difficult to tell whether the poor sound was due to bad reception or the speaker's full mouth. It sounded like both.

"There's reception at the station now?"

"_No, I'm on a bench outside. Can you hear me now?"_

"Yes, much better."

"_Something must have been blocking the reception, then. You know, for the past ten minutes I've been fighting off sparrows fixing to dive-bomb my sandwich. I think they're following me to this new bench. Yep, here they come. They've been hopping and flitting around me ever since I'd sat down, and now it looks like they're getting ready to launch a full-scale aerial assault."_

"That is unfortunate."

"_No kidding. Little feathered thugs. Not that I don't understand them, mind you, it's an excellent sandwich."_

"I meant you being outside. I was hoping to talk to you in private."

The sparrow-beset baritone held an ominous pause – possibly to swallow the rest of the food in his mouth.

"_About your friend in the basement, I presume?"_

"Yes. And possibly myself as well."

"_Well, fuck. Fuck, I tell you! This is not a good time. I've got a prior engagement uptown, and it's not really one I can afford to miss… Could this possibly wait a couple of hours? Let's say, three hours, to be safe? Or are both of you liable to get your heads sawed off between now and one o'clock?"_

"Oh, yeah, no problem. I mean, no one is breathing down our necks yet."

There was a slight emphasis on "yet" that Valjean didn't like at all.

"_When will they start?"_

Javert glanced at the flat plastic clock mounted next to the patio door. "Uhm… about 7 p. m. your time."

"_Oh goody, I'll be done way before that,"_ said the speaker with blatantly false cheer. The message was obvious: you're screwed either way, but at least this way I get to be entertained by the story of your woes before they kill you. "_Let's see, it's ten oh seven now… I'll ring you back at thirteen hundred, all right? That's eight in the evening your time. Is that okay?"_

"Excellent. Ring this number though, not my mobile."

"_All right. I hope it's nothing too serious?"_

What unspeakable horrors had to lurk behind that little adverb "too", Valjean preferred not to ponder.

"It probably isn't, but I want to make sure."

"_Talk to you soon then. 'Byvaj zdorov, grazhdanin nachal'nik.'"_

"Bye."

The line disconnected.

"What now?" asked Valjean.

"Now…" Javert drawled, clasping his hands in a "lock" above his head and stretching languidly. "Now we wait for him to call us back. You can stay down here and do whatever… Improvise us a supper, if you want, although I've already cleaned all the perishables out of the fridge, so there's just dried and canned stuff left in the cupboards. The books are in the living room… there's a yoga mat rolled up behind the refrigerator. Kill time in whatever manner you please, as long as it's on the premises. Make yourself available by eight. And I'm going to the living room for a nap."

"Why the living room?"

"Because it's too bloody hot upstairs, and I'm not turning on central air - I've already settled the electricity bill."


	11. Chapter 11

Author's Note: Nope, not dead. And the story lives as well, as you can see. And yes, this is the right chapter - there has been no mistake.

* * *

"Alive! I want him captured alive!" growled Thierry behind him. Xavier stumbled briefly, unfastening hurriedly his cudgel and dropping it, then quickly picked up speed as he was relieved of five pounds of dead swinging weight. 

The prisoner had discarded his red jacket somewhere on the way and was now clothed, apparently, in brown and gray: even Xavier's keen eyes had trouble spotting him on the winding path along the cliff-side.

How the hell did he get out of the city? wondered Xavier as he watched the escaping prisoner leap over yet another boulder, and where the hell did he procure the civilian garb? That sneaky fox. Well! there will be no escaping on my watch. It would not look good on my record.

Both the underfed milksop sergeants and the lieutenant had long fallen behind – Xavier had not heard his wheezing since they started down the edge of the cliffs. They have now been running for a full quarter of an hour, and number 24601 showed no sign of fatigue, leaping boldly and precisely from stone to cliff and back and legging it hard whenever a stretch of half-overgrown trail presented itself.

Xavier's hopes for aid from a mounted city guard were dwindling fast. There were no hooves to be heard behind him, and the prisoner was already beyond the point where he could be apprehended by a horseman. The road turned left where the prisoner turned right; the only way off the cliffs was a long and impossibly dangerous climb down the face of the rock to the water.

He aims to climb down, realized Xavier. He had scaled a smooth stone wall like a lizard three years before, so what's thirty feet of uneven rock? A piece of cake. And if he gets to the sea, reasoned Xavier, I've lost him for good – he swims like a fish, and there has been no boat sent out from the docks after him. I can swim, Xavier reasoned further, but I can't climb. Therefore, either I jump after him, surely breaking my legs, or I fall after him, with the same result. God damn it.

"Hey!" he yelled out after the man, hoping to distract him. "Hope you're not too winded, because I'm right behind you!"

The prisoner paid him no mind and, with the final leap, disappeared from view.

Xavier recovered sight of him within a minute, but the distance between them was already immeasurable. Number 24601 was suspended off a stone shelf about twenty feet from where Xavier fell upon the rocks breathing hard.

"Get back up here this minute!" barked Xavier as soon as he had breath enough to spare.

Number 24601 did not reply, as he was busy feeling below the shelf cautiously with his right foot.

"Don't make me climb down after you," warned Xavier.

The ex-galley slave raised his head and gave Xavier's scrawny figure a brief appraising look.

"I will do it!" reiterated Xavier, mentally gauging the height of the cliff and dismissing it immediately as too overwhelming to ponder.

When the prisoner did not answer, Xavier took a final deep breath, said a quick prayer for his soul under his breath and cautiously began his descent.

"What are you doing?" suddenly said the convict, watching him worriedly.

"Contemplating the fucking view!" snarled Xavier, making a futile attempt to bid his trembling calves to quit shaking. "For the last time, come back up here, or I'll come down, and then both of us will suffer!"

"Don't be stupid, Tocsin – you'll never make it. I barely made it, and I can climb. You couldn't find your feet in broad daylight with a lamp!"

"Call me that idiotic nickname one more time and I'll…" Xavier's words were lost along with his balance. Barely recovering, the young man clung desperately to a rocky protrusion, averting his gaze hurriedly from the frothy waves lapping at the rocks below his precarious perch.

"What's so idiotic about 'Javert'?" asked the convict teasingly. "Fine name for you. Well-deserved. Javert, the Tocsin. By concurrence, Proclaimer of Universal Truths and Captain of the Bloody Obvious."

"You are going to get it but good from me, you lousy whoreson," growled Javert, advancing slowly towards the prisoner, bits of chalky limestone crumbling under his hobnailed boots.

"You do realize that as soon as you get within an arm's reach of me I'll just move further away and down, right?"

"I'll follow."

"Will you swim after me as well?"

"I will."

"Didn't know you could swim, Tocsin."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, shit-britches," hissed Xavier, face flushed beet red with the effort of clinging to the slippery rock.

"And suppose I hurl this here tidbit at you for all the name-calling?" remarked the convict, lifting a medium-sized chunk off the rock shelf. "It won't take much to loosen your grip – limestone is slimy this time of year."

"You wouldn't risk unbalancing yourself."

Immediately, the limestone pocket next to Xavier's head shattered, powdering his face with chalk dust. A sharp sliver opened a gash at his temple; Xavier felt the tickling of blood drops rolling down his cheek.

"Unwise move," murmured Xavier. "I would've been more inclined to mercy before."

"The next rock will break your nose," calmly said number 24601.

"Who knows, it might turn out to be an improvement. My nose is not exactly pretty."

No more than seven feet separated them now: Xavier was two good handholds away from the convict's shelf, but the man was not moving.

"Tocsin, be reasonable!" The convict's voice was suddenly serious and pleading. "You're young still. This will be a pointless death. And I don't want you dead, I never did -- I just wanted out of the damn chains!"

"We all want on occasion that which we cannot have," panted Xavier. "I want things too. It passes. And this too will pass. Give it three years or so."

"No! Stop at once!"

The free fingers of Xavier 's right arm searched the rock surface desperately for a hold. His right foot was slipping; he could feel the foothold underneath giving way under his weight. And then he was tipping over backwards, and the convict was shouting frenzied warnings, reaching out to steady his pursuer, but Xavier was already falling.

And then there were rocks, and there was salt; and all was suffocating liquid pain and darkness.


End file.
